The prosecutor leading the rape and sexual assault case against Julian Assange is a "malicious" radical feminist who is "biased against men", a retired senior Swedish judge has told the hearing into Assange's extradition to Sweden.

In caustic evidence on the first day of the two-day hearing, Brita Sundberg-Weitman, a former appeal court judge, told Belmarsh magistrates court that Sweden's chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, who is seeking the WikiLeaks founder's extradition, "has a rather biased view against men". "I can't understand her attitude here. It looks malicious," she said.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, acting for Assange, asked if it was her view that Ny wanted "to get [Assange] into her clutches and then arrest him no matter what?"

"Yes" said Sundberg-Weitman. "It might be her attitude to have the man arrested and maybe let him suffer for a few weeks to have him softer [for interrogation]."

Such was the hostility towards Assange in Sweden that "most people take it for granted that he's raped two women", she said. The country is seeking Assange's extradition in relation to allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual molestation made by two women in August.

He denies all the allegations and has not been charged.

Under cross-examination by Clare Montgomery QC, for the Swedish government, however, Sundberg-Weitman admitted she had no personal knowledge of the conduct of the prosecutor in the case, basing her views instead on what she had been told.

She also acknowledged that while she believed the warrant to have been disproportionate, a Swedish district court and the appeal court, considering evidence from Assange's Swedish lawyer Björn Hurtig, had judged it both proportionate and legal. "I must say I am very concerned about the state of the rule of law in Sweden," she said in response. "It has been decaying since the mid-1970s."

The hearing is being presided over by Judge Howard Riddle, the chief magistrate. Assange listened intently from the dock, watched by supporters including Jemima Goldsmith, Bianca Jagger and Tony Benn, who had agreed to attend following an invitation from Goldsmith.

Montgomery also led the former judge to acknowledge that she was not an expert in the European arrest warrant, despite criticising its use in this case, and challenged line by line the newspaper article on which she said she was basing her assertion that Ny was a "radical feminist".

Sundburg-Weitman pointed to lectures on sexual violence that the prosecutor had made, to which Montgomery said: "But she's a rape prosecutor." The former judge maintained her assertion that the prosecutor was "a bit biased".

Robertson argued that both Ny and Claes Borgström, the lawyer representing the two women, were politically motivated. Ny had illegally confirmed Assange's identity on the charges when asked by a Stockholm tabloid, he said (accused sex offenders are customarily anonymous in Sweden).

"This man Borgström", meanwhile, had vilified Assange in the press and "would be behind bars for contempt in this country," the lawyer said.

Also called by the defence was Göran Rudling, a Swedish blogger and campaigner on the country's rape laws, which he believes are not tough enough.

Rudling said he was not a supporter of Assange or WikiLeaks, but had taken an interest in the case after finding tweets that were later deleted sent by "Miss A", one of the two women, in the hours after the alleged offences, in which she had asked if anyone was holding a crayfish party that she could attend with Assange, and in a tweet from the partythat she was "sitting outside at 2am, with the coolest and smartest people".

"It meant that the story told to police was not consistent with the tweets," he said. He had reported the tweets to police but had not heard back from them, he said.

Rudling also translated another document for the court that he had found on the internet, entitled "A seven point programme for legal revenge", apparently posted by Miss A in January 2010 but deleted in November. The last point included the admonition: "Remember, your victim has to suffer as much as he made you suffer."

Asked had he seen the police file relating to the case, Rudling said his knowledge was based on a 100-page bundle of documents faxed in November by Hurtig to Mark Stephens, Assange's British solicitor, and leaked onto the internet last week.

Earlier, Robertson, in opening the case for the defence, said that the Swedish custom of trying rape cases in secret was a "flagrant denial of justice". Assange had been subject to "trial by media", and it was "hyperbolic and irrational to suggest there was wickedness involved" in Assange's sexual behaviour, he said.

All relationships had "moments of frustration, irritation and argument", he said. "It doesn't mean that the police are entitled to slip between the bedclothes."

The act of "minor rape" allegedly committed by Assange against the second woman would not be an extradition offence in English law, he said. After three "utterly consensual" sex acts, she had objected to Assange having sex with her again without a condom, but "she let him continue". "It's not natural to call this rape."

Outside court, Assange said that since August "a black box has been applied to my life. On the outside of that black box has been written the word rape. That box has now, thanks to an open court process, been opened. I hope in the next days you will see that the box is in fact empty."

“The fact that women travel less than men, measured in person-kilometres per car, plane, boat and motorcycle – means that women cause considerably fewer carbon dioxide emissions than men, and thus considerably less climate change,” Johnsson-Latham said in the report.

“Women do not escape censure, however,” the magazine report said. “The report notes that in Sweden, women spend four times as much as men on consumer goods and - in a further dig at men, albeit unintended – 20 times as much on hygiene products.”

Recent leftwing-claims have linked cow and Norwegian moose flatulenceto global warming. In addition, warming has been blamed as a cause of wild fires, hurricanes and the Minnesota bridge collapse.

NOTE: BELOW IS THE PLATFORM OF THE FEMINIST INITIATIVE PARTY IN SWEDEN

Feminist Initiative Has a vision of a world in Which All Humans Have The Same potential and portability to live a full and complete lives. This vision not does correspond to our Lived reality. Women ARE systematically subordinated to but. This is something we want to change. Feminist Initiative Continues The Struggle and hardwork during ceilings by women throughout history to Improve Their Lives, a Tireless Labor, Which still takes place in homes, workplaces, streets, and schools, in literature, in music, at the theater and into the media.Feminist Initiative plaster Feminist Issues and Concerns at the top of the Political Agenda.

Feminist Initiative turns to women WHO want to abolish the Patriarchal Order and to Those but WHO join this Struggle in Solidarity.

Feminist Initiative not does believe "thats all women Can Agree on everything. Women differentiated from one another. Our not been raised, Hope, and wishes ARE Different. Our Circumstances, prospects, and resources divided us. We are ascribed Different societal position based on our Economic CONDITIONS and our class identity, our degree of education, our country of birth, our sexual preference, our skin color and our cultural Belonging. We also "differentiation in our values ​​and our ways of Constructing value system. But beyond the Difference lies one similarity: Women's Lives, Choices, and Opportunities ARE restricted by the Patriarchal power structure.Patriarchal society allows, but to define, subordinate, and Discriminator Against Women. The Power Relations Between Women and Men May Take Many Forms and expressions, But Do They always work to the disadvantage of women.

Feminist Initiative makes demands from the point of view of a feminist analysis, Which Shows That although women speak with Different voices, Are situated in Different locations, Have Different experiences, and Live Different Lives in Different Conditions, we are all confronted by the power structure That plaster but the position of superiority and women into positions of inferiority. Within this structure, the Things That Men are, Do and Say take on a higher value Than The Things That women ers, do, and say. This order is a social problem and a problem of justice; Above all it is a problem of democracy.

Feminist Initiative Sees the CONDITIONS under Which women live. Images of women as sexual objects confront us every day. But women subject to violence on a daily basis. But rape women and girls.Women WHO transgress the Social Boundaries of gender and sexuality ARE harassed and discriminated Against. Many Single Mothers live in Serious Economic duress. Trafficking in women occures daily around the world, as well as in Sweden. The global labor market exploits the labor of underprivileged women. In Sweden, the gender-based Income Gap is Increasing. Female-Dominated Professions consistently Have Low Salaries. Much of the Work Performed by women is still bothering Invisible and Unpaid. Women Carry Out the Majority of domestic chores and take Responsibility for Providing Care, In The Public as well as domestic spheres. Women ARE discriminated Against professionally, with the motivation That we bear children-Regard less of whether we do Actually. Women Receive A small retirement pension Than but. Women ARE underprioritized in medical research and healthcare. Elderly women ARE subjected to poor treatment. Women Who do note Fit Into a white Western standards ARE ascribed an "other" ethnic identity and marginalized. Disabled women ARE discriminated Against. Women's Lives ARE put at risk because "Swedish refugee policy Lacks Consideration for Women's Reasons to seek asylum. The judicial system With its courts of law acquits but WHO Have perpetrated rape and abuse, the while women and girls Suffer The Consequences. Women ARE less variable than option but to take up space, husband Themselves Heard and ask ceilings Seriously Within the educational, professional, corporate and judicial structures, as well as in the realms of culture, politics, & the media. We want to change all this, and much more.

Feminist Initiative "also Secs thats the global Patriarchal Power System, Which Operate and Sustain Itself through violence and warfare, leads to an unequal distribution of the world's resources as well as Ruthless exploitation and destruction of the environment. The regime of violence forces large parts of the world's population, Especially Women and Children, Into lives in extreme poverty. Girls are denied the right to education. Children ARE Forced Into child labor and prostitution, and ARE recruited as child soldiers. Feminist Initiative Sees International Solidarity and an anti-militaristic stance as fundamental Aspects of ITS work.

Feminist Initiative ice Devoted To The Thought Of Freeing women from gender-based inequality and Injustice. We turn to the Patriarchal order with our demands. We Can not permit Decisions That sometime allow women to Liberate Themselves from the inequality at the expense of others. We Strive for the liberation of all women. This is how we create Solidarity Among women, this is how we continue the Feminist Struggle.

Feminist Initiative speed Grown tired of Insufficient Measures.Nearly all Swedish Political Parties Call Themselves Feminist, But Women's Lives Remain Unchanged, day in and day out, year after year. Despite Many women's Tireless effort Within party politics, women's Interests Have Never Been Adequate given priority. Swedish gender politics Have Been hitherto based on a view of equality as a non-zero sum ​​game, Meaning That women's CONDITIONS cannabis Improvement Without affecting Those of Men. Feminist Initiative builds upon ITS politics than analysis, Which makes it clear That women's subordination results from the privileging of Men. There Forester, but must Agree to relinquish Their privileges. We share this analysis with contemporary women's networks and Organization, as well as with the women's movement, Which speed throughout history fought for the human rights of women.

Feminist Initiative, a formulator politics, Which into everythin area and aspect of life poses a challenge to patriarchy. We anticipate a large degree of resistance, But expect an even Larger and Strong feminist desire for change.

Gudrun Schyman, Swedish politician, Marxist, feminist former member of Parliament

Gudrun Schyman, the former Swedish Member of Parliament, once proposed a special “sexual harassment tax”—a tax on all males to compensate for gender-based inequalities and the sufferings of all women in general. Incredible, but true!

In 2002, the Swedish Marxist Member of Parliament Gudrun Schyman, suggested a bill to collectively tax all Swedish men for violence against women. In a speech that followed, she posited that all Swedish men are just like the Taliban: “The discrimination and the violations appear in different forms depending on where we find ourselves, but it is the same norm, the same structure, the same pattern, that is repeated in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, as well as here in Sweden.”

Not surprisingly—if you know anything about Swedish society—male columnists from several newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet and even the Swedish Ombudsman for Equal Opportunities, Claes Borgström, chimed in, saying that Schyman was right: All men are indeed like the Taliban.[1]

The feminist former Swedish Left Party leader, Gudrun Schyman, had no problem cultivating a culture of Victimhood for Economic Gain. She wrote the motion which reads, in part:

“When the costs of this aspect of socially-destructive male behavior are added up, it becomes clear how much money men’s violence costs society—money which could be used to increase women’s income, for healthcare, better working environments, and so on. It’s then only natural to ask how men collectively should take economic responsibility for men’s violence against women.

"It is strange that not all women hate men" MAY PROVOKE the former Minister for Gender Equality, Margareta Winberg, write the controversial words in a column in the shelter the National League of Journal of Women's Press. "It could probably be provocative, especially for men," she says.Photo: PETER KJELLERÅSMargareta Winberg: I'm no man haterThe Government is working closely with the extreme feminists who think that "men are animals".

It is revealed in part two of SVT's documentary "Sex War".

The film, which is broadcast on Sunday, shows a strong link between government policies on gender equality and women's shelter the national organization, Roks.

In Roks Journal of Obstetrics Press writes former Minister for Equality Margareta Winberg in a column:

- Sometimes I'm amazed that more women really hate men.

What do you mean by that?

- When you look out over the world the way women are treated, you can be surprised that they still have patience with the men, "says Margareta Winberg.

Militant feminism.. How do you think such a statement is perceived?

- Yes, it can probably be provocative, especially for men. I pursue the idea in the Chronicle. But I do not belong to the group man-hater, I would just make it.

What is included in the group?

- That you should not ask me. I belong to no such group and do not know anyone who hates men.

Rok is one organization that according to TV documentary pays tribute to militant feminism. Through skillful lobbying, they managed to obtain the assistance of Margareta Winberg transforming extreme feminist views into truths.

- The direction in which Rok is radical feminism, which some regarded as extreme, never got into government policy, "said Margareta Winberg.

Rok got last year SEK 11.7 million in grants from the National Board and organizes two-thirds of Swedish women's shelters.

"Men are animals'2006, women's shelters to share at 100 million, according to an agreement in principle between the government, the Left and Green parties.

In Roks Journal hailed extreme feminist Valerie Solanas in a review.

She writes in his manifesto: "To call a man an animal is to flatter him, he is a machine, a walking dildo, a biological incident."

The documentary Chairman of Rok, Ireen von Wachenfeldt, whether she agrees with Solana.

- Yes, men are animals. Do not you? says Ireen von Wachenfeldt to the reporter.

When Aftonbladet asks what she means by that says Ireen von Wachenfeldt:

- I personally do not think men are animals, but from Solana, I can understand women who think so.

ORIGINAL ARTICLEA government investigation into the cost to society of male violence against women. And a tax against men to settle the account. Those were two suggestions put forward by the Left Party's feminist council, led by colourful former party boss Gudrun Schyman.

The first idea is not so controversial. A number of countries, including USA, Canada and Finland have undertaken similar exercises and Schyman feels it's time Sweden did the same:

"It's a huge social problem [violence against women], which very few people want to discuss. It's about time we put a price on it."

Schyman wants the two proposals to be adopted by her party as motions to be put forward for debate in Parliament during the current session. That shouldn't be a problem for the first, but the idea for a male tax, supported by six Left Party members of parliament, has yet to be approved by the full parliamentary group.

Figures from the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority show that in 2003, one woman a week was murdered in Sweden, with 5 attempted murders a week, 62 incidents of physical abuse every day and six rapes a day.

The text of Schyman's proposal reads:

"When the costs of this aspect of socially destructive male behaviour are added up, it becomes clear how much money men's violence costs society - money which could be used to increase women's income, for healthcare, better working environments, and so on. It's then only natural to ask how men collectively should take economic responsibility for men's violence against women."

Schyman believes that just as the tax system evens out the playing field between the classes, it can perform a similar job between the sexes:

"We know that women have significantly less money than men. Men have some kind of willy bonus in that they earn 10% to 20% more."

Representatives from other parties were not slow to come forward to voice their opinion. Nalin Pekgul, chairman of the Social Democrats' women's association, said:

"Women who have been beaten and are on sick leave represent an important social problem... But a tax wouldn't change men's behaviour. It would also mean that innocent men are punished."

SvD spoke to a number of other female politicians who were critical. The chairman of Conservative women, Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd, said:

"I'd very much like to see what the price tag is [for the costs for violence against women], but it's no solution to ask men as a group to pay just because some can't behave."

Eva Larsson of the Green Party's women's committee said:

"I'd rather see more men getting involved and leading the campaign against violence."

The Liberal Party are putting forward their own motion calling for tougher penalties for violence against women and violations of injunctions.

Meanwhile, on Monday there was a potentially interesting development on the European front of the battle for equality. The EU is set to issue a directive in December calling on member states to ensure equal treatment of men and women in the purchase of goods and services.

Countries can opt out if they wish. In Sweden, this could affect the so called 'women's tariff' (tjejtaxa) traditionally operated by insurance companies, taxi companies, pub and nightclub owners and hairdressers. It isn't clear at the moment whether the government intends to implement the directive in full.

Sweden was recently ranked the most gender-equal country in the world. But feminists there say there's been a backlash. They're forming a new political party to put women's issues high on the agenda.

Subhead: Sweden was recently ranked the most gender-equal country in the world. But feminists there say there's been a backlash. They're forming a new political party to put women's issues high on the agenda.Byline: Jerome Socolovsky

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (WOMENSENEWS)--A new graffiti has appeared on the streets of this city.

"Men are animals," it says.

The slogan has become a symbol of a heated debate in this country over why full gender equality has not been achieved despite decades of legislation promoting it.

"There is an anger," says Hanne Kjoller, a columnist for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. "The things we have achieved, we achieved them years ago."

The "'men are animals' controversy," as its known here, exploded onto the front pages of newspapers in May, after Ireen von Wachenfeldt, a government official who is one of Sweden's best-known feminists, was featured in the Swedish Television documentary, "The Gender War."

At the time, von Wachenfeldt was head of ROKS, the national network of shelters for abused women, which is a government institution. A reporter on the program noted that the organization had printed excerpts of the "SCUM Manifesto."

The "SCUM manifesto" was published in 1983 by Valerie Solanas, a radical U.S. feminist previously known for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol in 1968. In the book's title, SCUM stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men. Within its covers, Solanas calls on women to "destroy the male sex," arguing that medical science made it possible to give birth only to females and without the aid of males.

The Swedish TV reporter, Evin Rubar, asked von Wachenfeldt about the statement from the manifesto: "To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo."

"Is that your standpoint?" Rubar asked.

"Yes, it's my standpoint," the director said.

"That man is an animal?" the reporter said.

"Man is an animal," von Wachenfeldt said. "Don't you think so?"

The documentary sparked fierce reactions across the country. Some women's shelters have left the national network in protest, and von Wachenfeldt resigned in the midst of the controversy. But her remarks opened a national discussion on the topic of women's equality.

A Model of Equality

The assertion that "Man is an animal" might seem out of place in Sweden--a country that has been a model of sexual equality--where society sees it as an integral part of the egalitarian ethic of its welfare state.

After the women's liberation movement took off in the 1970s, the Swedish government passed laws mandating equality in every aspect of public life and even some aspects of private live. The government prohibited violence against women, required salary parity for men and women in similar jobs and gave men and women the right to equal parental leave. In the 1990s, Sweden's government became the first in the world where half the ministers were women.

Earlier this year, Sweden was ranked the most gender-equal country by the World Economic Forum.

But being first in the rankings is not enough, say feminists. Women still earn on average only 71 percent of what men earn, and some studies--though these are disputed in feminist circles--suggest that domestic violence is a larger problem than widely believed.

"There has been a strong women's movement here that has achieved a lot," said Lotten Sunna, Stockholm-based spokesperson for Feminist Initiative, a new empowerment movement that is focused on putting feminism even higher on the political agenda. "But that has also led to a false belief that we have reached equality, that we are there, and as a result of that things are starting to back up again."

Women Not Prioritized

Sunna argues that the current Swedish political establishment does not prioritize women's issues.

That's the case, she says, even though Prime Minister Goran Persson has labeled himself a feminist, 45 percent of Swedish parliament members are women and most national political parties have made feminism part of their political platforms.

"It's the politically correct thing to say, that I'm a feminist," Sunna said.

In its gender-gap ranking, the World Economic Forum praised Sweden's liberal society and welfare provisions. It said that because of them, Swedish women "have access to a wider spectrum of educational, political and work opportunities and enjoy a higher standard of living than women in other parts of the world."

Nevertheless, Feminist Initiative's platform describes Sweden as a country that is dominated by a "patriarchical power structure." It says women are discriminated against, subjected to violence, exploited in the labor market, under-prioritized in health care and receive a smaller proportion of welfare benefits.

"We grew up believing that we would actually be equal to men," said Sunna, who was a teen in the 1970s. "Swedish women get very angry when you discover that that is not the case."

In a recent survey directed by Eva Lundgren, a sociologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, 46 percent of women say they've been victims of some form of gender violence in their lifetimes. Lundgren's methodology has been criticized, however, for having too broad a definition of gender violence. Government data puts the number at around 12 percent.

Still, Sweden's leaders have long made efforts to achieve equality, at least on paper. Back in 1974, the government officially renamed "maternity leave" as "parental leave," and gave both parents the "right" to share in a government benefit that now guarantees 13 months of paid leave. Since 1975, abortion has been legal, and quotas striving for equal representation in local and national government and public institutions have been around since the 1980s.

Men Have Changed

What can hardly be disputed is that Swedish men have changed. Men now take on average 17 percent of the government-guaranteed parental leave, according to the national statistics bureau. In 1974, men took zero percent.

Nowadays, it's not at all unusual to see men pushing baby strollers along the sidewalks and playing with their children in the playground during working hours.

Stephan Mendel-Enk is author of a book on masculinity, "With an Obvious Sense of Style," that has been praised by feminists. He says Swedish men take parental leave because the government has made it economically feasible. Societal prejudices remain, he says.

Still, the question remains why full equality remains so hard to achieve in a country like Sweden, particularly in the workplace.

Rebecka Edgren, who writes for Stockholm-based Mama Magazine, says most Swedish feminists--like their counterparts in other countries--have long put the burden of empowerment on women themselves. But several years ago, things changed.

"When the feminists started to look at men instead of women . . . a lot of men got upset," she said.

Edgren says many MEN feel particularly threatened because the demands now being made by feminists, such as requiring parents to take equal amounts of parental leave, will force them to make even more drastic changes to their lifestyle and career.

Comments out of Context

After the "Gender War" documentary, von Wachenfeldt denied the assertion in the show that the government agencies dealing with women's issues are dominated by radical feminists, and accused Rubar of taking her comments out of context.

But other feminists questioned her and the domestic violence numbers put forward by Lundgren, who was also interviewed in the program.

Hanne Kjoller wrote in one of her columns that "the group of feminists that Lundgren belongs to have an ideological and economic interest in portraying abuse of women as normal male behavior."

Author Mendel-Enk says the result of the documentary was to reinforce notions that Swedish government agencies dealing with women's and equality issues are led by people with extremist ideas.

"Many men had this idea all the time, but now they got some supposed proof for it," he said.

One man who didn't feel that way is Michael Ericsson, who on a recent Sunday was biking along the Gota canal in rural Sweden with his teen-age son.

When asked about the "men are animals" controversy, he said it doesn't affect his happiness with the "50-50" arrangement he and his wife have regarding cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids.

"It's not my problem," he said, then mounted his bike and continued on the 30-mile trip that he and his son take every weekend.

I ask myself this question because the swedish sistem works sometimes like a police state run by feminist organisationes.

All citizens in Sweden have a person number that contains adress, family information of the individual and it is widely accesible. Even at the video store they know where you live based on your person number.

Here is no real ownership for the apartements, people either pay rent all their lives or buy bostadratt wich means the right to live in that apartement. So it will belong to the house company for ever.

In Sweden exists the positive discrimination policy that basically gives more rights to women than to man. Ex when a swedish woman give birth to a son abroad he receives swedish citizenship. If a man has a son abroad he have to be married to the mother in order to the child to receive swedish citizenship. So the message is clear: women are more responsible than man.

Another exemple is the prostitution law: the law only punishes the buyer of sexual services for up to one year in prison, but selling sexual services is perfectly legal. Now first this law is clear that it was forced on the government by the feminist groups who want to punish the men. Most of the times the men are the buyers of sexual services, so they can be sentenced to one year in prison for buying a prostitute wich I think is totally ridiculuos for a civilized european country. Nowhere in Europe you find such radical law. Talking about double standards here: the men have to be punished for abusing the poor victimes the women, but the women can continue to advertise prostitution adds on internet within full legality. How ridiculuos is this? Prostitution is a trade that needs both parts to be involved and equally responseble: the buyer and the saler.

If a guy have sex with a girl and both of them are adults and drunk, the girls is always the victim. she can even go to the police the next day or whenever she wants and claim she was raped.

So a woman is not responsible for her acts if she is drunk?

The state even gives her money to help her go through this "painfull experience". This is also a law that discriminates men big times. The men are worthless in Sweden, they can be abused by law anytime. But the women are always right and always the victims!We should judge an ideology based on its results or its consequences. Now what are the results of 30 years of feminist ideology and policy in Sweden?

Most women are alone because thy lost their feminity, have a promiscuos sexuality, most children are born out of a family or a couple, the tensions between man and women are very high.

In schools they teach children that girls are smarter than boys and that the children who grow up in a lesbian family will be more succesfully in life! How can they know that? Gay couples are only allowd to adopt children from a few years time.

Tolerating homosexuality is one thing but encourage it is another thing.I do not have anything against homosexuality, I think some people are born gay but other are influenced by the society they live in and maybe they try a few times and they become gay.But all people have the right to choose their sexual identity, they do not have to be pushed by the governements policy.

I do not have anything against women either, I love and respect women, but I think they should not have more rights than men or laws that advanteges them all the time.Children are teached to respect women, but never to respect men, or respect transexuals, f ex.

I believe that all human beens should be respected equally and all people should have the same rights and not be discriminated based upon their gender, sexual identity, nationality, political or religios or atheist views!

That is how the whole world shoul be!

But unfortunatelly there is not one country in this world where all humans are equally treted, NOT ONE !

During the past few years, gender feminism has been on the march in Sweden. Radical leftwing feminist ideas are today more or less a state ideology, incorporated in all facets of education and also promoted by various government agencies.

So when the feminist party Feminist Initiative announced that they would run for election it looked as if they might become a force to be reckoned with. The party was headed by Gudrun Schyman, who recently had lost her job as the leader of the former communist party.

Since Schyman is a charismatic and popular politician many people believed that Feminist Initiative might at least come close to gaining the 4 percent of votes necessary to attain seats in the Swedish parliament. But in the election on 17th of September the party gained less than 0.7 percent of the votes.

So what happened? As it turns out, the radical and odd views that the party's representatives hold scared away many voters.

Gender feminism is an ideology that grew as socialist sought new ways to promote their ideas following the fall of communism. This leftwing branch of feminism is closely related to a Marxist way of thinking and assumes that men as a group have constructed "hidden barriers" in society through which they can oppress women.

In Sweden this branch of feminism has gained popularity among politicians. The former social democratic government not only included the ideas of gender feminism in public education but also created opportunities for feminist researchers to promote their ideas in state financed universities (it should be noted that gender feminism is far from scientific – the ideas are seldom tested against reality).

Especially among journalists and young students there is a lot of support for leftwing feminism. However, there was a great deal of internal tension among the feminist party and its front figures made numerous radical remarks that scared away the voters.

For example, queer-feminist professor Tiina Rosenberg scared away fellow feminist Ebba Witt Brattström from the party by remarking that women who sleep with men are to be regarded as traitors to their gender. The party leader Gudrun Schyman has herself not only proposed a "man tax" but also compared Swedish men with the Talibans in Afghanistan.

Feminist Initiative failed to attract voters, but it is still a party worth keeping an eye on. It is one of the most ambitious attempts of creating a feminist party and has drawn attention from feminist movements abroad. Recently American leftwing icon Jane Fonda visited one of the party's activities to give them her support.

What the experience in Sweden has shown us is that policy makers, even among the center-right, are easily seduced by the idea that government should act to restrict individual and economic freedom in order to promote gender equality. The strongly ideological view of the world that gender feminists promote is often simply assumed to be factual by policymakers.

Feminism, like environmentalism, becomes yet another issue where all political parties want to show voters that they are "doing something to solve the problem." And the problem is often simply the free choice of parents to decide who spends most time with the children, or of employers to decide who should be promoted to a new position. Every time feminism is on the political agenda the result is less freedom.

Most likely not only the feminist ideology but also feminist parties are with time going to rise as a new enemy of those who wish to live in a free society. Like the environmentalist movement, the feminists will spend a few years learning how to not appear too radical to the common voter, but ultimately keep their resolve to increase the power of central government in order to reach their goals.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote in Socialism, feminism becomes a spiritual child of socialism once it attacks institutions of social life: "For it is a characteristic of socialism to discover in social institutions the origin of unalterable facts of nature, and to endeavor, by reforming these institutions, to reform nature."

Modern leftwing feminism is a new and growing enemy towards liberty. We shouldn’t be surprised to see feminist parties gaining momentum in other countries or even rising up to power as time passes. It is therefore important for advocates of a free society to take up the debate with feminists and explain that both women and men benefit from living free of state coercion.

September 30, 2006

Nima Sanandaji [send him mail] is president of the Swedish think tank Captus and the editor of Captus Journal. He is a graduate student in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.

How the Feminists’ “War against Boys” Paved the Way for Radical IslamBy FjordmanSome commentators like to point out that many of the most passionate and bravest defenders of the West are women, citing Italian writer Oriana Fallaci and others. But women like Ms. Fallaci, brave as they might be, are not representative of all Western women. If you look closely, you will notice that, on average, Western women are actually more supportive of Multiculturalism and massive immigration than are Western men.

I got many comments on my posts about Muslim anti-female violence in Scandinavia. Several of my readers asked what Scandinavian men are doing about this. What happened to those Vikings, anyway? Did they drink too much mead in Valhalla? Despite the romantic mystique surrounding them today, the Vikings were for the most part savage barbarians. However, I doubt they would have looked the other way while their daughters were harassed by Muslims. In some ways, this makes present-day Scandinavians worse barbarians than the Vikings ever were.

One of the reasons for this lack of response is a deliberate and pervasive censorship in the mainstream media, to conceal the full scale of the problem from the general public. However, I suspect that the most important reason has to do with the extreme anti-masculine strand of feminism that has permeated Scandinavia for decades. The male protective instinct doesn’t take action because Scandinavian women have worked tirelessly to eradicate it, together with everything else that smacks of traditional masculinity. Because of this, feminism has greatly weakened Scandinavia, and perhaps Western civilization as whole.

The only major political party in Norway that has voiced any serious opposition to the madness of Muslim immigration is the rightwing Progress Party. This is a party which receives about two thirds or even 70% male votes. At the opposite end of the scale we have the Socialist Left party, with two thirds or 70% female votes. The parties most critical of the current immigration are typically male parties, while those who praise the Multicultural society are dominated by feminists. And across the Atlantic, if only American women voted, the US President during 9/11 would be called Al Gore, not George Bush.

The standard explanation in my country for this gender gap in voting patterns is that men are more “xenophobic and selfish” than women, who are more open-minded and possess a greater ability to show solidarity with outsiders. That’s one possibility. Another one is that men traditionally have had the responsibility for protecting the “tribe” and spotting an enemy, a necessity in a dog-eat-dog world. Women are more naïve, and less willing to rationally think through the long-term consequences of avoiding confrontation or dealing with unpleasant realities now.

Didn’t feminists always claim that the world would be a better place with women in the driver’s seat, because they wouldn’t sacrifice their own children? Well, isn’t that exactly what they are doing now? Smiling and voting for parties that keep the doors open to Muslim immigration, the same Muslims who will be attacking their children tomorrow?

Another possibility is that Western feminists fail to confront Muslim immigration for ideological reasons. Many of them are silent on Islamic oppression of women because they have also embraced “Third-Worldism” and anti-Western sentiments. I see some evidence in support of this thesis.

American writer Phyllis Chesler has sharply criticized her sisters in books such as The Death of Feminism. She feels that too many feminists have abandoned their commitment to freedom and “become cowardly herd animals and grim totalitarian thinkers,” thus failing to confront Islamic terrorism. She paints a portrait of current U.S. University campuses as steeped in “a new and diabolical McCarthyism” spearheaded by leftist rhetoric.

Chesler has a point. Judging from the rhetoric of many feminists, all the oppression in the world comes from Western men, who are oppressing both women and non-Western men. Muslim immigrants are “fellow victims” of this bias. At best, they may be patriarchal pigs, but no worse than Western men. Many Western universities have courses filled with hate against men that would be unthinkable the other way around. That’s why Scandinavian feminists don’t call for Scandinavian men to show a more traditional masculinity and protect them against aggression from Muslim men. Most Norwegian feminists are also passionate anti-racists who will oppose any steps to limit Muslim immigration as “racism and xenophobia.”

Totalitarian feminists in Norway are threatening to shut down private companies that refuse to recruit at least 40 percent women to their boards by 2007, a Soviet-style regulation of the economy in the name of gender equality. I have read comments from Socialist politicians and leftist commentators in certain newspapers, such as the pro-Multicultural and feminist — critics would say Female Supremacist — newspaper Dagbladet, arguing that we should have quotas for Muslim immigrants, too.

What started out as radical feminism has thus gradually become egalitarianism, the fight against “discrimination” of any kind, the idea that all groups of people should have an equal share of everything and that it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that this takes place. A prime example of this is Norway’s Ombud for Gender Equality, which in 2006 became The Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud. The Ombud’s duties are “to promote equality and combat discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability and age.”

Western feminists have cultivated a culture of victimhood in the West, where you gain political power through your status in the victim hierarchy. In many ways, this is what Political Correctness is all about. They have also demanded, and largely got, a re-writing of the history books to address an alleged historic bias; their world view has entered the school curriculum, gained a virtual hegemony in the media and managed to portray their critics as “bigots.” They have even succeeded in changing the very language we use, to make it less offensive. Radical feminists are the vanguard of PC.

When Muslims, who above all else like to present themselves as victims, enter Western nations, they find that much of their work has already been done for them. They can use a pre-established tradition of claiming to be victims, demanding state intervention and maybe quotas to address this, as well as a complete re-writing of history and public campaigns against bigotry and hate speech. Western feminists have thus paved the way for the forces that will dismantle Western feminism, and end up in bed, sometimes quite literally, with the people who want to enslave them.

Swedish Marxist politician Gudrun Schyman has suggested a bill that would collectively tax Swedish men for violence against women. In a 2002 speech, the same Schyman famously posited that Swedish men were just like the Taliban. A male columnist in newspaper Aftonbladet responded by saying that Schyman was right: All men are like the Taliban.

The irony is that in an Islamic state similar to the one the Taliban established in Afghanistan, certain groups of people, in this case non-Muslims, pay a special punishment tax simply because of who they are, not because of what they earn. Radical feminists such as Ms. Schyman are thus closer to the Taliban than Western men, although I’m pretty sure that irony would be completely missed on them.

Schyman’s battle cry is “Death to the nuclear family!” I have heard the same slogan repeated by young Norwegian feminists in recent years. Schyman seethed that today’s family unit is “built on a foundation of traditional gender roles in which women are subordinate to men. The hierarchy of gender, for which violence against women is the ultimate expression, has been cemented.” “Conservatives want to strengthen the family. I find this of grave concern.”

In the year 2000, Swedish feminist Joanna Rytel and the action group Unf**ked Pussy entered the stage during the live broadcast of the Miss Sweden contest. She also wrote an article called “I Will Never Give Birth to a White Man,” for a major Swedish daily, Aftonbladet, in 2004. Rytel explained why she hates white men — they are selfish, exploitative, vain, and sex-crazed — and just to make things clear, she added, “no white men, please… I just puke on them, thank you very much.”

Misandry, the hatred of men, isn’t necessarily less prevalent than misogyny, the hatred of women. The difference is that the former is much more socially acceptable.

If all oppression comes from Western men, it becomes logical to try weakening them as much as possible. If you do, a paradise of peace and equality awaits us at the other side of the rainbow. Well congratulations to Western European women. You’ve succeeded in harassing and ridiculing your own sons into suppressing many of their masculine instincts. To your surprise, you didn’t enter a feminist Nirvana, but paved the way for an unfolding Islamic hell.

It is correct, as feminists claim, that a hyper-feminine society is not as destructive as a hyper-masculine society. The catch with a too soft society is that it is unsustainable. It will get squashed as soon as it is confronted by more traditional, aggressive ones. Instead of “having it all,” Western women risk losing everything. What are liberal feminists going to do when faced with aggressive gang of Muslim youngsters? Burn their bras and throw the pocket edition of the Vagina Monologues at them?

Perhaps women can succeed in turning their men into doormats, but it will be on the cost of doing so to their nation and to their civilization as well. According to Italian American feminist Camille Paglia, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” That may be an exaggeration, but male energy is definitely a driving force in any dynamic culture.

Muslim anti-female violence in the West is a symptom of the breakdown of the feminist Utopia. Freedoms need to be enforced by violence or the credible threat of violence, or they are meaningless. Even though women can take steps to protect themselves, the primary responsibility for protection will probably always belong to men. Women will thus only have as much freedom as their men are willing and capable of guaranteeing them. It is a major flaw in many feminist theories that they fail to acknowledge this.

The difference between women’s rights and women’s illusions is defined by a Smith and Wesson, not by a Betty Friedan or a Virginia Wolf.

Writer Lars Hedegaard in Denmark does not buy into the theory that women approve of Muslim immigration out of irrational naivety or ideological conviction. He thinks they simply want it, as he writes in a column entitled “The dream of submission.” He does notice, as I do, that women are more likely than men to support parties that are open for more Muslim immigration.

Why is this, considering that there is hardly a single Muslim majority area in the world where women enjoy the same rights as men? And Hedegaard asks a provocative question: Are women more stupid and less enlightened than men, since they in such great numbers are paving the way for their own submission? He comes up with an equally provocative answer: “When women are paving the way for sharia, this is presumably because women want sharia.” They don’t want freedom because they feel attracted to subservience and subjugation.

The English author Fay Weldon has noted that “For women, there is something sexually very alluring about submission.” And as Hedegaard dryly notes, if submission is what many women seek, the feminized Danish men are boring compared to desert sheikhs who won’t allow you to go outside without permission. Muslims like to point out that there are more women than men in the West who convert to Islam, and this is in fact partly true. Islam means “submission.” Is there something about submission that is more appealing to some women than it is to most men? Do women yield more easily to power?

In a newspaper article about Swedish women converting to Islam, the attraction of the Islamic family life seems to be a common feature among women converts. Several of them state that in Islam, the man is more rational and logical, while the woman is more emotional and caring. This means that the woman should be the one to take care of the children and do the housekeeping, while the man should be the one to work and provide for the family. Many of the women feel that their lives lack a sense of purpose, but Christianity does not seem like a relevant alternative to them.

The fixation with looks in our modern society and the tougher living conditions for women, who are supposed to both have a career and do the housekeeping, play a part, too. Which is curious, considering the fact that it was women themselves, encouraged by modern talk show hostesses such as Oprah Winfrey, who talked about “having it all”; it wasn’t the men. Men know that nobody can “have it all,” you have to give up something to get something. Maybe women have discovered that working life wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be? Men do, after all, universally die years before women all over the world.

The plot of novelist Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is that the modern history of Christianity was a big, patriarchal plot to deprive women of the rights they supposedly enjoyed before this, during the age of “the sacred feminine” and the fertility goddesses who were always barefoot and pregnant. But if that’s the case, why is it that women make up the majority of Europe’s churchgoers? Why do women, out of their own free will, seek out these oppressive, patriarchal religions? Maybe French philosopher Ernest Renan was onto something when he called women “the devout sex.” Do women need religion more than men?

Are some feminists simply testing out men’s limits in the hope of finding some new balance between the sexes, or are they testing men to find our which men are strong enough to stand up to their demands, and thus which men can stand up to other men on their behalf? I heard one woman who was an ardent feminist in the 1970s later lament how many families they broke up and destroyed. She was surprised at the reaction, or lack of reaction, from men: “We were horrible. Why didn’t you stop us?”

In psychiatry, female patients are seen more frequently with self-inflicted wounds or self-destructive behaviour than men, who tend to direct their aggression outwards. It is also a well-known fact that many women blame themselves for abusive husbands, and make excuses for their abusers’ behavior. Has the West adopted some of the negative traits of the female psyche? The newly feminized West gets attacked and assaulted by the Arab and Islamic world, and continues to blame itself, while at the same time be fascinated by its abusers. It is thus behaving in the same way as a self-loathing woman towards an abusive man.

Virginia Woolf in her book A Room of One’s Ownpraises the genius of William Shakespeare: “If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.” “Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say.” “His extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil.” She “killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross–roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.”

Feminists claim that the reason why women haven’t been as numerous in politics and science as men is due to male oppression of women. Some of this is true. But it is not the whole story. Being male means having to prove something, to achieve something, in a greater way than it does for women. In addition to this, the responsibility for child rearing will always fall more heavily on women than on men. A modern society may lessen these restraints, but it will never remove them completely. For these practical reasons, it is unlikely that women will ever be as numerous as men in politics or in the highest level in business.

Christina Hoff Sommers, the author of The War Against Boys, points out that “after almost 40 years of feminist agitation and gender-neutral pronouns, it is still men who are far more likely than women to run for political office, start companies, file for patents, and blow things up. Men continue to tell most of the jokes and write the vast majority of editorials and letters to editors. And — fatal to the dreams of feminists who long for social androgyny — men have hardly budged from their unwillingness to do an equal share of housework or childcare. Moreover, women seem to like manly men.”

She also notes that “One of the least visited memorials in Washington is a waterfront statue commemorating the men who died on the Titanic. Seventy-four percent of the women passengers survived the April 15, 1912, calamity, while 80 percent of the men perished. Why? Because the men followed the principle ‘women and children first.’ “The monument, an 18-foot granite male figure with arms outstretched to the side, was erected by ‘the women of America’ in 1931 to show their gratitude. The inscription reads: “To the brave men who perished in the wreck of the Titanic. [...] They gave their lives that women and children might be saved.”

Simone de Beauvoir famously said, “One is not born, but becomes a woman.” She meant that they should reject all the inducements of nature, society, and conventional morality. Beauvoir condemned marriage and family as a “tragedy” for women, and compared childbearing and nurturing to slavery.

Strangely enough, after decades of feminism, many Western women are now lamenting the fact that Western men hesitate to get married. Here is columnist Molly Watson:

We’re also pretty clued up about why our generation is delaying having children — and it has nothing to do with being failed by employers or health planners. Nor, despite endless newspaper features on the subject, does it have much to do with business women putting careers before babies. In my experience, the root cause of the epidemic lies with a collective failure of nerve among men our age. […] I don’t know a woman of my age whose version of living happily ever after fundamentally hinges on becoming editor, or senior partner, or surgeon, or leading counsel. But faced with a generation of emotionally immature men who seem to view marriage as the last thing they’ll do before they die, we have little option but to wait.

What happened to the slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”? I’d just like to remind Ms. Watson that it was in fact the women who started this whole “single is best” culture that now permeates much of the West. Since women initiate most divorces and a divorce can potentially mean financial ruin for a man, it shouldn’t really be too surprising that many men hesitate to get involved at all. As one man put it: “I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.” At the same time, women during the past few decades have made it a lot easier to have a girlfriend without getting married. So women make it riskier to get married and easier to stay unmarried, and then they wonder why men “won’t commit?” Maybe too many women didn’t think all this feminism stuff quite through before jumping on the bandwagon?

The latest wave of radical feminism has severely wounded the family structure of the Western world. It is impossible to raise the birth rates to replacement level before women are valued for raising children, and before men and women are willing to marry in the first place. Human beings are social creatures, not solitary ones. We are created to live with partners. Marriage is not a “conspiracy to oppress women”, it’s the reason why we’re here. And it’s not a religious thing, either. According to strict, atheist Darwinism, the purpose of life is to reproduce.

A study from the United States identified the main barriers to men tying the knot. Heading the list was their ability to get sex without marriage more easily than in the past. The second was that they can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying. The report lends weight to remarks by Ross Cameron, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Family and Community Services, who chided Australian men, blaming Australia’s looming fertility crisis on men’s commitment phobia. “The principal reason young women say they don’t get around to having children is they can’t find a bloke they like who is willing to commit,” he said. “This commitment aversion in the Australian male is a real problem.”

Barbara Boyle Torrey and Nicholas Eberstadt write about a significant divergence in fertility between Canada and the U.S.: “The levels of Canadian and American long-term trends in age of first marriage, first births, and common-law unions are consistent with the divergence in total fertility rates in the two countries. But the divergence in none of these proximate variables is large enough to explain the much larger divergence in fertility.” “Changing values in the U.S. and Canada may be contributing to the fertility divergence. The stronger notional role of men in U.S. families and the greater religiosity of Americans are positively associated with fertility, and the latter is also a strong predictor of negative attitudes toward abortion. Women in Canada enter common-law unions more often, wait longer than American women to marry, and have children later and less often.”

In Europe, Newsweekwrites about how packs of wolves are now making a comeback in regions of Central Europe: “A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany’s wolves.” “Our postcard view of Europe, after all, is of a continent where every scrap of land has long been farmed, fenced off and settled. But the continent of the future may look rather different. “Big parts of Europe will renaturalize,” says Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. Bears are back in Austria. In Swiss alpine valleys, farms have been receding and forests are growing back in. In parts of France and Germany, wildcats and ospreys have re-established their range.”

“In Italy, more than 60 percent of the country’s 2.6 million farmers are at least 65 years old. Once they die out, many of their farms will join the 6 million hectares (one third of Italian farmland) that has already been abandoned.” “With the EU alone needing about 1.6 million immigrants a year above its current level to keep the working-age population stable between now and 2050, a much more likely source of migrants would be Europe’s Muslim neighbors, whose young populations are set to almost double in that same time.”

It is numbers like these that have induced Phillip Longman to foresee “the Return of Patriarchy” and proclaim that “conservatives will inherit the Earth:”

“Among states that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004, fertility rates are 12 percent higher than in states that voted for Sen. John Kerry.” “It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as “world citizens” are also those least likely to have children.” “The great difference in fertility rates between secular individualists and religious or cultural conservatives augurs a vast, demographically driven change in modern societies.” “Tomorrow’s children, therefore, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society.”

“In addition to the greater fertility of conservative segments of society, the rollback of the welfare state forced by population aging and decline will give these elements an additional survival advantage.” “People will find that they need more children to insure their golden years, and they will seek to bind their children to them through inculcating traditional religious values.”

This last point is worth dwelling with. The elaborate welfare state model in Western Europe is frequently labelled as “the nanny state,” but perhaps it could also be named “the husband state.” Why? Well, in a traditional society, the role of men and husbands is to physically protect and financially provide for their women. In our modern society, part of this task has simply been “outsourced” to the state, which helps explain why women in general give a disproportionate support to high taxation and pro-welfare state parties. The state has simply become a substitute husband, upheld by taxation of their ex-husbands.

It should be mentioned that if this welfare state should for some reason cease to function, for instance due to economic and security pressures caused by Muslim immigration, Western women will suddenly discover that they are not quite as independent from men as they like to think. In this case, it is conceivable that we will se a return to the modern traditional “provide and protect” masculinity, as people, and women in particular, will need the support of the nuclear and extended family to manage.

Another issue is that although countries such as Norway and Sweden like to portray themselves as havens of gender equality, I have heard visitors to these countries comment that the sexes are probably further apart here than anywhere else in the world. And I readily believe that. Radical feminism has bred suspicion and hostility, not cooperation. And what’s more, it has no in any way eradicated the basic sexual attraction between feminine women and masculine men. If people do not find this in their own country, they travel to another country or culture to find it, which in our age of globalization is easier than ever. A striking number of Scandinavian men find their wives in East Asia, Latin America or other nations with a more traditional view of femininity, and a number of women find partners from more conservative countries, too. Not everyone, of course, but the trend is unmistakable and significant. Scandinavians celebrate “gender equality,” and travel to the other side of the world to find somebody actually worth marrying.

To sum it up, it must be said that radical feminism has been one of the most important causes of the current weakness of Western civilization, both culturally and demographically. Feminists, often with a Marxist world view, have been a crucial component in establishing the suffocating public censorship of Political Correctness in Western nations. They have also severely weakened the Western family structure, and contributed to making the West too soft and self-loathing to deal with aggression from Muslims.

Although feminism may have strayed away into extremism, that does not mean that all of its ideas are wrong. The women’s movement will make lasting changes. Women have occupied positions considered unthinkable only a few decades ago. Some things are irreversible.

Women pretty much run men’s private lives. Marriage used to be a trade: Female nurturing and support for male financial and social security. In a modern world, women may not need men’s financial support quite as much as they did before, while men need women’s emotional support just as much as we have always done. The balance of power has changed in favor of women, although this situation may not last forever. This does not have to be bad. Women still want a partner. But it requires men to be more focused on doing their best.

A study by scientists at the University of Copenhagen concludes that divorce is closely linked to poor health, especially among men. The research indicates that the death rate for single or divorced males aged 40-50 is twice as high as for other groups. The research has taken into account whether there are other factors that could lead to an early death — such as a mental illness and having grown up under poor social conditions. “Considering the high amount of children growing up in broken homes we do believe that the study is very relevant. “It proves that divorce can have a serious consequence,” and that we may need a prevention strategy. John Aasted Halse, psychologist and author of numerous books about divorce, agrees.

The apparent contradiction between female dominance on the micro level and male dominance on the macro level cannot be easily explained within the context of a “weaker/stronger sex”. I will postulate that being male first of all is some kind of nervous energy, something you need to prove. This will have both positive and negative results. Male numerical dominance in science and politics, as well as in crime and war, is linked to this. Women do not have this urge to prove themselves as much as men do. In some ways, this is a strength. Hence I think the terms “The Restless Sex” for men and “The Self-Contained Sex” for women are more appropriate and explain the differences better.

Daniel Pipes keeps saying that the answer to radical Islam is moderate Islam. There may not be any such thing as a moderate Islam, but there just might be a moderate feminism, and a mature masculinity to match it. In the book Manliness, Harvey C. Mansfield offers what he calls a modest defense of manliness. As he says, “Manliness, however, seems to be about fifty-fifty good and bad.” Manliness can be noble and heroic, like the men on the Titanic who sacrificed their lives for “women and children first,” but it can also be foolish, stubborn, and violent. Many men will find it offensive to hear that Islamic violence and honor killings have anything to do with masculinity, but it does. Islam is a compressed version of all the darkest aspects of masculinity. We should reject it. Men, too, lose their freedom to think and say what they want in Islam, not just women.However, even a moderate version of feminism could prove lethal to Islam. Islam survives on the extreme subjugation of women. Deprived of this, it will suffocate and die. It is true that the West still hasn’t found the formula for the perfect balance between men and women in the 21st century, but at least we are working on the issue. Islam is stuck in the 7th century. Some men lament the loss of a sense of masculinity in a modern world. Perhaps a meaningful one could be to make sure that our sisters and daughters grow up in a world where they have the right to education and a free life, and protect them against Islamic barbarism. It’s going to be needed.

Fjordman is a noted Norwegian blogger who has written for many conservative web sites. He used to have his own Fjordman Blog in the past, but it is no longer active.